A New Dreamweaver?

A new wind is blowing, kids. And things are about to get… uh, let's say interesting in the Dreamweaver world. Remember the Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times? A new Dreamweaver is coming and it's going to be interesting.

I tell the story in my Introduction to Dreamweaver workshops, about how the Dreamweaver developers didn't take criticism personally, they saw them as current and potential customers explaining what they needed, to part with more of their money. And so Dreamweaver became Dreamweaver II, then Dreamweaver 3, Dreamweaver 4 and Dreamweaver 5 and it all happened on both PCs and Macintoshes. Each step along the evolutionary way the program got bigger and more feature-laden. Bugs were fixed. Processes became easier. The program itself got easier to use and more capable at every step.

And then I like to say Macromedia hired a Man Of Vision, because the next version of Dreamweaver wasn't Dreamweaver 6, but rather Dreamweaver MX 2000. And it wasn't just a new shine and a few new menu items, but a radical departure over what had gone before. Dreamweavers 1-5 were each more similar than different. A jump from version 2 to version 5 might be jarring, but you could still make your way around the program. But the new MX 2000 release was radically different. The interface was bigger and the code behind it more important, too. We had serious work to do and Dreamweaver MX 2000 was now a serious tool to help us do it. We could better deal with JavaScripts and Cascading Stylesheets and more easily build pages using Templates, PHP and more. Even issues like accessibility were beginning to get coverage. Dreamweaver MX 2000 became the basis for Dreamweaver MX 2004, evolving the new look into a powerhouse of a CSS support, Templates, Libraries and Snippets support, scripting support and more.

And then I like to think the man of vision was fired, because the next version was called simply Dreamweaver 8. Css and scripting support were again improved and the whole user experience seemed to have been made a little easier. But the program continued to look much as it had since Dreamweaver MX 2000. During this time, Macromedia was acquired by Adobe, who had their own ideas about names. Adobe doesn't like to just sell software in boxes. They want to sell Creative Suites. So, Dreamweaver 8 gave way not to Dreamweaver 9, but to Dreamweaver CS3. And there is now an open beta test for the new program, to be called Dreamweaver CS4.

I have spent only a few hours working in Dreamweaver CS4 but I can tell you, it's going to be a little harder to get your brain around everything that's going on, but if you can put in the effort, you will be rewarded. The new program is terrific, but it is different enough to cause you some anxiety.

Cs4 brings a much busier interface, with the dreaded two-rows of main menu items that are becoming more and more common now, even as average display size continues grow. But there are many good things, too. Probably the most welcomed feature to my cubicle is that you can now work in Code View in two different places within your page. Anyone who has ever had a similar page header and footer will appreciate this, as will anyone who has ever tried to format specific recurring text in specific ways. Until now, you could see only a couple dozen lines of markup. Now you can work Code View and elect to Split the display, and scroll the upper page to line 165, while you work on lines 328, much deeper into your page. It makes things much easier, not having to constantly scroll ahead and back.

It's dangerous to complain too much during beta tests about features that don't work, or much of anything really, since it's all so fluid. Beta testing is all about finding bugs, but it is also a time to receive late-arriving code that finishes various new features or does what the current code does in a more elegant way. Software engineers are all about the elegant. So it's entirely possible that things you don't like about a beta have already been fixed, or at least reported, and will be fixed before the final program ships.

So I am not going to complain about the colorless look of DWCS4, or the way that "Design View on Top" doesn't stick any more. They're probably still workshopping various new colors and Design View on Top has worked correctly for nine or ten years, so it's unlikely that won't be fixed.

If you are using Dreamweaver CS3, you have no need to change right away to CS4. There are some nice things in the new program, but it's not like there are suddenly new ways of coding JavaScript or marking up pages. If your budget is tight, keep your current program.

But if you are still using Dreamweaver MX 2000, or Dreamweaver MX 2004, or maybe even Dreamweaver 8, you should probably start saving and planning for Dreamweaver CS4. It's a bit of a learning curve, and it's frustrating whenever this happens, but it always seems to be worthwhile, in the end. Just remember: The people who brought us Dreamweaver CS3 and new CS4 beta, still have jobs. There will probably one day be a Dreamweaver CS5, no matter what they call it.